


Ice-cold Perfection

by BlazingStarInInkyBlackness



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: A suicide attempt is sucessful, Bipolar Disorder, Bittersweet Ending, But its not any of these characters, Eating Disorders, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 01:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10606464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlazingStarInInkyBlackness/pseuds/BlazingStarInInkyBlackness
Summary: Alexander Hamilton was a hurricane.Thomas Jefferson was a blizzard.Fire and ice are never meant to mix but then again, neither are knives and wrists. In a mental institute a lot of thing happen that are never meant to.





	

Alexander Hamilton was a hurricane. He raced through life and destroyed every obstacle that blocked him. He roared and raged and he conquered.

Thomas Jefferson was a blizzard. He ripped people apart.

Alexander Hamilton was fire and rage.

Thomas Jefferson was cold.

So cold.

When people touched his skin they withdrew their hand with a frown. Thomas just smiled back, a smile that didn’t reach his cold eyes. Everything about him was cold or sharp. He was tall with a well-defined face and ribs that stuck out far too much.

His only source of warmth were the cigarettes which were always in his shaking hands. He stood outside buildings, leaning against the wall and taking long puffs. He stared languidly at passers-by and smiled where needed. There was no fire behind them, he was too far removed for that.

He was cold, cold as the blizzard and as cold as the death that approached him every day.

 

It hadn’t always been like that. Thomas had once burned bright, just like Alexander. Still in a different way but he’d burned so bright. He’d laughed and he’d outshone the best of them. He’d run circles around the best, laughed and crowed as they became dizzy and fell one by one.

Then she’d come into his life.

Martha, with a smile like the sun and words of poison. The words she’d whisper to him as he ate, as he stared at her plate that was so empty. He traced the ribs that seemed to claw their way out of her skin and she traced his lines of fat, whispering even crueller words.

He tried for her to begin with. He stopped eating as much and watched in a fascination as she pulled him into her starved existence. On the days when he trembled, when he wanted to reach for more food she’d be there, whispering the words she heard in her own head, words of warning, of lost love and beauty diminished to nothing.

He was a blizzard and she was the empty plain where he wore himself out until he was nothing. It took a long time for him to be nothing, to not want to reach for food. She’d whisper compliments then and he’d turn them down as he stared at what he still had to lose, what was still waiting to go.

Fat crawled across his skin in his dreams, crawled into his veins and choked him until he couldn’t sleep, as the bags under his eyes began to grow and the only thing that would help was the sensation of nothing in his stomach.

The first time Martha collapsed he was there even when she pushed him away. She said it was because she was still too much, too fat. She said it with a revulsion that he couldn’t stand because he could see her. In his eyes she was beautiful. A terrifying part of his brain told him that she was much less than he was.

After that a therapist tried to talk to Martha and Martha said what he wanted to hear. That night she whispered it to Thomas, whispered the lies that he then memorised. He learnt how to put weights into his pockets, how to drink water until he wanted to throw up and then just step onto the scales as if it was nothing. He learnt how to sew the weights into the hem of his clothes, clothes that hung off him.

His family sat him down after Martha collapsed, sat him down and begged for him to explain. He repeated the lies back. He didn’t know if they believed him. He didn’t care.

The day Martha killed herself Thomas was asleep in the next room. He woke and just stared at her for far too long. Her blood was cold, she was cold.

As the ambulance came in Thomas wondered how long it would take to become that cold, to become that perfect.

The thoughts scared him sometimes but he knew how to make them stop, he knew he had to become perfect. The blizzard wouldn’t be stopped.

Thomas wrapped himself in a shroud of pretend, ate when instructed and grieved. When he was alone he stuck a finger down his throat and remembered Martha wanted this, wanted him to be happy, to be perfect.

It hurt when he did that, when he forced his body to be better. He ignored it. It was a pain he deserved for failing to be perfect in the first place.

As he lay in bed each night alone he let his hands dance down his ribs, counting each of them and watching the gaps between them grow, the dips becoming caverns as he became more perfect. He felt his cheekbones bursting from his skin and he revelled in the sensation of weightlessness. Each time he stood he felt himself falling into nothingness as his vision darkened.

When James asked, Thomas just stared at him. James was an anchor, a safe harbour who wasn’t affected by hurricanes or blizzards. He had survived both. But Thomas was colder than ever before and he couldn’t let James see that.

James would try to stop him.

Thomas wasn’t going to let himself be stopped.

He burned colder and colder, watched as he became thinner but never thin enough. He scratched deep and angry lines into his arms when it wasn’t enough, when nothing was enough to stop the voices ordering him to be perfect.

Each slice of the knife brought him closer to Martha but he didn’t want that, not yet. He had to be perfect, had to show the world it was possible and that he had done it.

The first time Thomas collapsed he did it in silence, in his own room and smiled as he woke. Martha had been so close before she had died. He was getting so close, he was embracing the body he should always have had.

That night he stared into the mirror and felt like crying. He was so far from perfect it hurt. His ribs were invisible as the fat swelled around his body. He knew he was a disappointment, he was nothing. He was fat.

When Thomas took the knife to his arm he meant to stop, he really did.

As the blood seeped out of him he smiled weakly. Through glazed eye he could finally see the warmth as the last of it left his body, leaving only the blizzard, the perfection he had chased for so long.

 

Thomas had been wrong about James. He was not a safe harbour, he was a volcano. He shouted and raged and fought back at Thomas as the blizzard watched him in the hospital. He knew that one of the lines were pumping warmth into him, pumping food into him, making him imperfect. He hated it.

James raged and roared more as Thomas admitted quietly that it didn’t matter. As long as he was alive he would become perfect. James only fell silent when Thomas said he would be as perfect as Martha.

It was so difficult to remain cold as the world ordered him to not be, as they tried to poison him with food.

He had never truly known the force of a hurricane until he met Alexander. He saw the man in all of his glory, as he pulled his hair back, as he knew he would never be perfect but was so sure that his life was forfeit and he had to do something anyway.

Thomas saw the deep scars along Alexander’s arms and Alexander saw Thomas’.

They said nothing.

Thomas strove for perfection, Alexander strove for survival. They had both failed.

The drugs they pumped into Alexander made him slow, made him less manic. Thomas’ drugs gave him an energy he didn’t want. His drug was food. He wanted the drug of nothing, of a sharp blade and a packet of cigarettes to let him feel warmth. Alexander wanted the drug of nothingness, of silence as he sliced into his arms again.

In a mental institution neither were deemed acceptable.

They tried to rage so many times, against each other and with each other. When Alexander was hit to the floor by an attendant for speaking Thomas was there with his cold fury and weak muscles. Alexander burned so warm and Thomas so cold.

In the night it didn’t matter as they curled around each other, whispering what they wanted, what they needed.

Science would dictate that they form an equilibrium but they didn’t. They swung from one end of the spectrum to the other as fast as Alexander’s mood did. On some days they burned so bright as Alexander screamed and pulled at his hair, needing to do something. On other days they burned frozen as Alexander sobbed quietly and Thomas tried to hold him in frail arms and whispered words, words that were nothing like the poison that had once been pumped into him.

When Alexander’s meds began to work Thomas was still there as Alexander’s fire began to die down to nothing, as he looked and saw nothing that interested him. He began to stop existing fully. His swings were who he was, burning bright and screaming or sobbing, always passionate and always powerful.

Thomas could feel the cold being taken from him at the same time, pulled away piece by piece as they filled him with food he didn’t want.

When he stuck fingers down his throat he felt a burning warmth that was nothing like the warmth Alexander could give him, the warmth that comforted him and would never judge like James did.

Thomas realised how much he needed his hurricane, his fire, when Alexander vanished.

He had found a rusty nail and in his need to do something, in his mania to feel something he had dug the nail over the scars over and over again until he hit something and his warmth began to spread from him, as his fire began to bank and threatened to go.

Thomas was there when he woke up and he didn’t scream or yell. He just watched as the person he- Thomas didn’t have words for Alexander, no-one could explain a burning hurricane. He loved Alexander. He didn’t realise his frozen heart could love after Martha.

That night as they shared warmth in Thomas’ bed Thomas began to whisper. He begged Alexander to stop, begged him to calm down, to try to stop the fire consuming him.

Alexander stood and walked to his own bed, ignoring the blood stain from where the warm blood had left his body. Thomas watched him go.

He spent that night awake as he counted how few ribs he could still see.

Their relationship was broken after that. Thomas realised how broken Alexander was. He had been in the eye of the storm, watching the mayhem and destruction and laughing at it.

Then he was outside.

He saw Alexander hitting his head against the wall and screaming because he couldn’t do it anymore, he didn’t want to anymore. He watched Alexander curled in a corner doing nothing because the fire in his chest was burning so cold it wanted him to die.

The next batch of medication helped Alexander. It kept something alive in him that he had long since wanted dead. His fire wasn’t extinguished by it but it tempered it, tempered it and allowed Alexander to control it.

Thomas didn’t get a batch of medication, there was nothing that could fix him. He wasn’t broken, he just wanted perfection.

As he watched Alexander get better he strove to be better as well. He refused to eat and what little he did eat he sacrificed to the burning in his throat as vomit spilled into the toilet in front of him. The burn helped, helped remind him that he wasn’t doing it for Martha anymore, he wasn’t doing it as a punishment, he was doing it for Alexander.

Alexander would never want Thomas as he was.

When Alexander snuck into Thomas’ bed he trailed a hand across Thomas’ ribs.

Thomas didn’t understand why he started crying.

Thomas explained that he was going to be better, that he was going to be colder, the blizzard would grow until he was perfection, until he was ice cold to the touch.

Alexander asked in a whisper how he’d be able to touch ice, how he could hold ice close in the long nights, how could he love ice.

Thomas didn’t know. He just knew that perfection was ice cold and Alexander needed perfection.

Thomas needed perfection.

Alexander just needed Thomas.

One day Alexander was gone, was pulled back to his normal life with normal people as if he wasn’t a hurricane with a fire in the middle. Thomas retreated, allowing the ice to overpower him. He fought tooth and nail as the doctors tried to soil him with food, with imperfection. He screamed when they forced a tube down his throat, when they forced it into his stomach.

He would gag and stick fingers down his throat but nothing happened, the food too far into his system. He’d break down after that as he felt the fat build up all over again, as every ounce of perfection was ripped away to be replaced with fat.

Alexander visited one day and Thomas winced at the horror on his face. He pledged that he’d make it better, that he’d be perfect, that he wouldn’t let them break him. Alexander just shook his head. He told Thomas he didn’t need to be perfection, he shouldn’t be perfection.

Thomas yelled at him for that, felt the blizzard pick up and enshroud him as he pushed his fiery hurricane from his life. Alexander stared in horror as Thomas told him he wished the nail had found its home sooner.

Alexander didn’t visit again.

Thomas tried to convince himself that it didn’t hurt.

He knew that he just had to be better, had to be perfect and then it would be over, he’d be happy. Alexander would be happy.

The blizzard inside him condensed, raged stronger and faster than ever before but in such a small space. He was exhausted so often and he knew his body was falling apart. His hair was brittle and it fell away as he drew his hands through it. Each step was uncertain and he fell to the floor all too often.

His knuckles had cuts along them from where his treacherous body had refused to vomit, had stood in the way of perfection. He was done with standing in the way of perfection. He wished for a nail, for something to drive into his body until it grew cold, until he was done with the flimsy masquerade.

He knew he wasn’t strong enough to be perfect, he wasn’t like Martha.

The staff began to keep constant watch on him which he didn’t mind. He was so tired now. The power of the ice burned through his energy levels so quickly. He spent most of his time asleep and was surprised each and every time he woke up.

He was surprised and just a bit disappointed.

The food they shoved into him hurt, it hurt for him to stare into the mirror and see all of his hard work to go to waste as they filled him with more and more poison. The marks on the back of his hand healed up as they began to restrict his time in the bathroom, as they began to hold him down when he tried to force the fingers into the back of his throat.

Thomas gave up at some point.

He let them fill him up. He let them destroy what he’d worked for. He wanted to give up on everything, just collapse to the floor and never get up. One of the days he was held down in the medical room he spotted a scalpel and grabbed it in the confusion.

The staff yelled and retreated. He stared at them before driving it into his own wrist.

He fell to the side knowing a knife did a hell of a lot more damage than a rusty nail.

 

He woke up. He was tired of that. His hands were tied and there was a food pipe in his throat. He stared into nothing and wondered why they wouldn’t just let him go.

Alexander visited him again.

Beside him was Thomas’ twin. Thomas stared at him for a long moment before he turned back to his hurricane. His hurricane he’d tried to push away for so long. Alexander spoke and spoke, didn’t stop even as he pushed forward a box filled with imperfection.

Thomas stared at the food and then stared at Alexander.

Alexander expected the ice cold insults, the words spat out at Alexander as Thomas talked about his perfection, how he was still so close and how Alexander didn’t understand because he would never be perfect.

Gilbert had not been expecting it. Thomas hated the ice in his chest as he felt nothing watching his twin cry out in agony of losing Thomas.

When they had to leave Gilbert didn’t want to move, didn’t want to abandon Thomas again. He pledged promise after promise that he’d be there, some in English and some in French. He promised that he’d protect Thomas, that he would save him.

Thomas and Alexander knew how impossible that was.

Alexander pushed forward the box of food. He didn’t say anything but he glanced at Gilbert.

Thomas reached for the imperfection and forced himself to take a bite.

It tasted like cardboard on his tongue but Gilbert’s face lit up as if the sun had come out.

 

That night, Thomas trailed a hand across his stomach and sighed. He wanted to be perfect but he didn’t know if it existed. Martha had never found perfection. Why did Thomas think he could?

Martha was gone, the only reminder of her was the lack of fat on Thomas’ body. Gilbert, his shining sun, was still there. Alexander, his fiery hurricane, was still there, James, his dormant volcano and safe harbour, was still there.

The next day Thomas forced himself to eat and then ignored the voice that sounded so much like Martha ordering him to throw up.

 

Thomas felt his perfection slip away one day at a time and he sobbed for it, warm tears that no longer felt alien to his warm, still beating heart. His ice began to melt as he warmed. His hurricane was still there, his volcano was still there and his sun was still there. His ice didn’t belong there, with the warmth they gave him.

He melted, slowly but surely. His ice blizzard faltered and slowly began to calm. He saw the sun through his clouds, saw the destruction he had caused on his own body and he sobbed as if a rain cloud had been ripped in two.

His arms were scarred and his body was ugly, fat, far too fat. The staff said he was underweight but he ignored it. He couldn’t know the numbers, couldn’t know how far he was from the perfect weight Martha had always struggled for. He didn’t care that he knew he’d passed it so long ago, that Martha, who was a full foot shorter than him, had never reached it in even in her worst moments.

Gilbert didn’t care about the scars, didn’t shrink away at the feeling of fat across Thomas’ body. He talked and smiled. He looked at Thomas as if he was already perfect. Thomas didn’t have the heart to tell him anything else.

When Thomas finally went home it didn’t feel real anymore. Gilbert was there but Thomas didn’t feel like he was there anymore. Martha wasn’t there.

Alexander wasn’t there.

That one hurt more.

James stayed close to Thomas and watched in relief as Thomas ate food. It wasn’t an imperfection anymore. It was an inconvenience. He needed it and that was all. He fought to have that thinking, to not think that the food was poison.

They all tried to help him but there were too many days where the ice blizzard took over Thomas again and he screamed, throwing the poison away and reopening the cuts along his knuckles.

On those days his heart was frozen solid and he didn’t care as his sources of warmth and life cried. He didn’t want warmth and he certainly didn’t want life.

A month after he was released he fell into Alexander’s bed. They became the fiery blizzard once more and afterwards they lay next to each other whispering nothings because maybe that was all that was left.

When they woke Alexander took his medication. Thomas forced poison into his mouth and didn’t let himself vomit.

They held each other tight on Alexander’s cold nights where he reached for nails and Thomas tried to make his frozen heart warm enough to help Alexander. On Thomas’ cold days Alexander was there, he was there to push Thomas’ hands away from counting his ribs, to hold his hand to not throw up.

On Alexander’s fiery days Thomas was there to catch him when he fell. He was there to support Alexander and they rose together, the ice and fire twirling around each other to destroy anything that opposed them. They then held each other, neither trying to make the other like him, just trying to be there.

They weren’t always. When Alexander found his new nail, when he found a loop of rope, a pen, a piece of paper and a hook Thomas wasn’t there. He was there when Alexander woke up to hold him tightly and swear that it would be okay, that for every winter there was a summer.

Alexander wasn’t there in the nights it got to be too much, when Thomas remembered Martha’s words and took a knife to his skin to remind himself how far away from perfection he was, how ugly his body was because of him. Alexander would be there the next day to patch it all up. Alexander was there no matter how imperfect Thomas believed himself to be.

Perfection would always elude Thomas and calm would always elude Alexander. As they lay, entwined, in bed it didn’t matter. They were each other’s opposite. They were summer and winter, ice and fire, they were so different but that didn’t matter. They loved each other.

They were pretty sure that would be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having a bad day so I decided to torment Jefferson a lil bit.  
> Once more, I haven't edited this as much as I normally do because I wrote this in the last few hours. Basically I adore the poetry like stories on here so I tried one. Dunno how well it worked out but still.  
> Also, if you want to know how old these characters are, well, I do as well tbh.  
> See you next time!


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